Based on materials from the BBC and Wikipedia https://www.bbc.com/ukrainian/features-62794689
The British government is led by Elizabeth Truss, a 47-year-old Tory politician who wants to be seen as the new Iron Lady. She promises to cut taxes and calls for Putin to be stopped.
It was she who gave their votes to the majority of party members - she scored about 81 thousand votes, and her competitor Rishi Sunak - 60 thousand. This was announced at a special meeting of the party. Truss is now a staunch conservative and right-wing liberal. The question is whether she will change her beliefs when she needs to. It's not the first time for her.
In her first speech, Liz Truss thanked the competitor and fans. And especially to the predecessor Boris Johnson.
Liz Truss, more than May, is similar to the determined and ideological conservative leader that Thatcher was, and Truss herself tries to subtly remind of this similarity. But if Truss says something not prepared in advance, there may be surprises. The public will remember her blunder at a meeting this February with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, when Lavrov, assuring that Russia was simply moving its troops on its territory and was not going to attack Ukraine, tried to ridicule and asked if Truss recognized Russia's sovereignty over Voronezh. and Rostov regions. Truss, obviously, did not make out, decided that it was about Donetsk and Luhansk and burned out: "Great Britain will never recognize Russia's sovereignty over these territories."
British newspapers and social media users were happy to mock Truss on July 20 when she reached the final of the election of the party leader and in a tweet about this, in the dictum "hit the ground running" - "start without delay" - she forgot to write the last word. It turned out just "fall" - "hit the ground". The full text of the tweet was: "Thanks for the trust you've given. Ready to fall on the first day." Truss corrected the mistake on the same day, but it was too late.
With oral speech in an informal setting, according to some British snobs, Truss is also not all right.
“She seems to be joking, but it’s hard to understand, because sometimes it seems that Liz Truss’s human language is not native,” You magazine correspondent wrote in 2019 in a story about an interview with Truss in a relaxed atmosphere over lunch at a restaurant.
In speeches and articles, Truss appears before the public as an ideological politician who has not been at the head of Great Britain for the last thirty years, just since the time of Thatcher - a real Tory, a right-wing liberal. Not the liberal who has been called that in recent decades, first in the United States and then in Europe, not essentially leftist, but a true liberal - those who are for individual freedom and freedom of enterprise. At the same time, Truss does not go to church and voted for the legalization of same-sex marriages - such is modern British conservatism.
"At least in the eyes of her supporters, she is the heiress of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, who cuts taxes," the Times wrote about Truss in June, at the very beginning of the election of a new leader.
There is a war going on in Europe, Great Britain - including in the person of Foreign Minister Liz Truss - is actively helping Ukraine, and now, it would seem, there is no more important problem - but along with the war, the economic crisis came, and it was the economy that became the main topic of discussion. Sunako. Truss is promising to cut taxes by reversing the hikes in health care and corporate taxes introduced or planned by her rival Treasury Secretary Rishi Sunak.
As a result, the British budget could fall short of the many billions of fees planned by Sunak. Sunak is a financier and instinctively strives to keep the budget in balance. Truss, however, is also an accountant by profession (and they completed the same course at Oxford), but principles are important for her now - and the budget, she is sure, is coping, it is only necessary to postpone the post-pandemic return to the current public debt limit. In addition, Truss promises to conduct a general audit of public spending, as well as create investment zones with simplified rules and requirements for firms.
Those who do not succumb to the pressure and charm of Truss ask: how sincere is she when she talks about principles?
“Many who have watched her for many years doubt whether she has any strong convictions at all, or whether she simply stands for what it is now convenient to stand for,” wrote a British columnist for the American CNN. In 2000 Truss married Hugh O'Leary, an accountant; the couple have two daughters. From 2004 to mid-2005, she had an extramarital affair with a married MP, Mark Field, who was appointed by the Conservative Party as her political mentor. However, her marriage to O'Leary survived the affair. Will Liz Truss be as successful as premier as she is in her personal life?
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